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Moments with You Couples Devotional 11/10

You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. 3 JOHN 6

Between interaction with the culture, media and their peers, this year your teenagers will be exposed to one hundred thousand messages about sex. How many of these will come from you?

That's the question Sharon Hersh posed on one of our FamilyLife Today broadcasts recently, and it is a good one. Sex is talked about incessantly in the predominant media channels that today's teens are wired into. It's almost impossible to avoid. It's also a frequent topic for discussion in hallways, in Internet chat rooms, in emails and on the phone. And although this generation has become more comfortable talking about this subject than any generation before them, parents still find it nearly impossible to bring up.

But we'd better—because 99 percent of what they're hearing in those one hundred thousand messages is wrong!

I assure you, most of the mistakes we made in this area were not because we were too involved. Rather, they occurred when we made some dangerous assumptions that our children's convictions and standards were more firmly in place than we thought. We also erred in thinking that peers from excellent Christian homes embraced biblical convictions as well. In the words of our teens, "NOT!"

A letter we received from a young woman, who became pregnant as a teenager, cemented this resolve in us. I hope it will in you, as well. After telling her story, she wrote, "Parents, talk to your kids. Let them get angry. I would rather my children say, ‘I hate you and your rules' than say later, ‘Why didn't you tell me I was headed for trouble?' "

Please don't sit back and let your children negotiate these sexual traps alone. They need you to guide them through. They need to hear the truth—from you—not just once, but repeatedly.

DISCUSS

What do you think you know about your children's sexual standards? What will you do to find out for sure?

PRAY

Pray for God's protection of your children's sexual purity and for their convictions, and ask for the courage to repeatedly break through the conversation barrier.